same sex in for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. the f.b.i. should be keeping a close eye on the bankers who stole billions of dollars from the middle class during the financial collapse but instead they're keeping tabs on peaceful americans who are trying to loosen wall street's death grip on our economy and government in just a moment what do new f.b.i. documents reveal about the agency's surveillance on the occupy wall street movement

also president obama cut short his hawaiian vacation to get back to fiscal cliff negotiations but given that he and democrats have put everything they can on the table and republicans still won't compromise what hope is there in striking a deal that doesn't leave the middle class high and dry and later the fuels for newtown connecticut victims may have finally ended but unfortunately funerals for gun victims in america never truly stop another story of a mass shooting and how the n.r.a. is more interested in saving profits than saving lives. and we begin tonight with occupy wall street during the heyday of the occupy movement last year if you were lucky enough to walk through one of the encampments as i was frequently here at occupy d.c. here to see a community built as an example of what our nation should be striving for you would

have seen health care provided for free no for profit health insurance leeches looking to squeeze as much money as they can out of family caring for a sick child you also want to see education provided for free and healthy food provided for free and shelter provided for free see when it comes to basic essentials the for profit motive. was not allowed within the confines of occupy and the nation facing economic desperation historic levels of wealth inequality in a rapidly disappearing social safety net occupy was the way forward a community in every city that conservatives as an example of what we as americans should be striving for during a time when wall street suits were choking the lives out of most of us but if you're an f.b.i. agent then occupied looked like something completely different to the f.b.i. occupy was a breeding ground for violence and domestic terrorism thanks to a freedom of information act request by the party. movement was

a favorite target of the f.b.i. even before the surveillance operation conducted against the occupy movement and its participants by the f.b.i. and the department of homeland security working with local law enforcement for the protection of corporate america and it wasn't just on wall street occupy encampments in indianapolis milwaukee memphis richmond jacksonville and even freakin anchorage alaska were put under watch by the f.b.i. and described in internal memos as potential domestic terror threats but why did

the f.b.i. consider a movement comprised of students senior citizens mothers with baby carriages and americans of all colors and backgrounds such a threat especially when time and time again confronted by police brutality occupiers didn't fight back or abandon their commitment to nonviolent resistance they sat there peacefully taking a dousing of pepper spray to the face or a nightstick to the stomach or in the case of marine vet scott olsen a tear gas canister to the skull so what was the f.b.i. so afraid of. but they had finally pushed the nation to a breaking point the backlash was underway and the profiteers who had been sitting rich collecting their tolls for health care and education and housing thought the

game might finally be up corporate america had good reason to be afraid as hundreds of billions of dollars in profits were at stake if occupy was if it was successful and things like free universal health care and education were suddenly afforded to everyone but again why was the f.b.i. which has no. health care so concerned about occupied why was the f.b.i. focused on peaceful demonstrators rather than actual criminals on wall street who are routinely committing fraud. to me this is what's most disturbing about all of this we are once again witnessing in america a clash between organized people on one side an organized money on the other it's another one of those turning points in american history where we decide to move forward as a nation and embrace greater equality and economic up opportunity or we regress backward toward new feudalism and seen a phobia and unfortunately at a time when we need our elected representatives in agents of our democratic

government to be on our side to secure progress they chose to be on the wrong side of history they sided with organized money of organized people they sided with the bankers enough to foreclose on they side with the health insurance executives and not the sick they sided with criminals and the patriots it's reminiscent of another turning point in the one nine hundred sixty s. when the f.b.i. at the behest of robert kennedy targeted the living embodiment of peaceful social change dr martin luther king jr tracking his every move and recording his every phone call back then the fear wasn't dr king's connections to terrorism but instead his connections to communism and needless to say the f.b.i. surveillance turned up not a single connection between dr king and the commons. we know today and we knew back then that dr king the civil rights movement and the anti vietnam war movement run the right side of history and our government headed up by paranoids like richard nixon and j. edgar hoover were on the wrong side of history but these lessons have not been

learned and so here we are again today another inflection point american history and again our f.b.i. and government by labeling occupy a threat have staked out a position on the wrong side of history which makes the work that we organized people have left to do so much more difficult we're not just up against corporate america we're up against the corporatocracy to now for more on the f.b.i. surveillance of the occupy movement creation leopold joins me from our l.a. studio is the lead investigative reporter at truthout dot org jason welcome back to the show great to be here thank you for having me on so you've been covering this story pretty extensively you actually filed for the request yourself with this latest batch of documents what's the most striking revelation that you can do and i just want to point out that the partnership partnership for civil justice is not the only entity that that follow the foil requests i follow the four requests several four requests on october thirty first of two thousand and eleven for these

specific documents and the f.b.i. told me in response to my boy requests that they could not locate any responsive records related to occupy and that's why i'm currently engaged in a freedom of information act lawsuit with against the department of justice and the f.b.i. to end a lie on their part right i mean they had to talk i went yes yes i was actually characterize a that i will say that if in fact there were any active investigations going on under. you know under the attorney general guidelines under foil laws they could actually say that they did not have responsive records but that would be remarkable in in the sense that we're dealing with a. protest movement here what sort of investigations were were taking place well i think from these documents we can we can see that they immediately

viewed occupy as not just a criminal threat but they routinely characterize the the movement as terrorists that this was domestic terrorism there are several passages in these documents that have stuck out to me particularly one on page sixty one if . if your viewers have access to these records it shows that. there seems to be some sort of intelligence that the f.b.i. either obtained or was disseminating about sniper activity that's somehow snipers wanted to take out occupy leadership. in houston there was some exchange in which they were talking about snipers wanted to attack protesters it's unclear who these snipers are who you know

what who they're affiliated with so i want to make clear that this is not in any way it seems to suggest that the f.b.i. was thinking about this rather it's just some intelligence information that's just being shared there's it's i mean it's hard to kind of figure out what all is in this because huge chunks of it are redacted i mean what what kind of yes hills might be behind all that why did outing do you think i mean this is strictly speculation this well you know the exemptions that they. that they cite in order to justify the withholding and certainly you know privacy. information issues related to privacy but also law enforcement techniques and procedures anything that may have to do with an active investigation i should note that these are there are only ninety nine pages actually that were released. with regard to this batch of documents that came out they withheld they identified four hundred pages or three

hundred ninety nine to be exact so they actually withheld three hundred pages and we're only seeing just a sliver of what of what was happening during the height of the occupy movement and i expect with the you know with the lawsuit freedom of information act laws that we have moving forward that we will see more documents being released but i think that these documents. it would show exactly what was taking place with regards to surveillance activities possibly confidential informants who was infiltrating occupy and then disseminating information or sharing information with the f.b.i. with local law enforcement there's you know all the occupy encampment seem to get busted up at around the same time which field the speculation that the crackdown on occupy was a coordinated nationwide effort initiated by people you know at the top of our

government do these new documents lend any credence to this theory. well there's no smoking gun in the document in terms of showing that. the f.b.i. and local law enforcement f.b.i. d h s and local law enforcement coordinate with each other but i will point out that on page seven of this batch of documents there's a bulletin a safe people to and that is being disseminated by the f.b.i. to a law enforcement center in wisconsin green bay wisconsin and basically all this says is we like to warn you that we found out that occupy protesters may want to shoot police officers does not give any further indication or information rather as to where that where they obtained that information so it would be it would be clear that the that that the information that was being shared possibly led to

the way that the police reacted to receiving this information more more documents hopefully just and we're told with truthout thank you thank you i'm next plan b failed in the house last week so what's his plan c. and more importantly does president obama have a new plan that doesn't screw over social security recipients fiscal fiscal cliff next. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything

you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country uses our own are through you know what kind of mind their terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to give us a defeat terrorism on the on the liberal and the christian point just because your beliefs about it. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells us and facials that garbage he calls it breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break that.

so tonight president obama is returning from his hawaiian christmas vacation early to get a jump start on fiscal cliff negotiations and if he plans to again negotiate away social security benefits that i'll speak on behalf of most progressive then tell him to head back to hawaii and spend more time on the beach last week president obama did what he's routinely hinted at doing in put social security on the table in the fiscal cliff negotiations house democrats led by nancy pelosi signed off on the cuts to social social security leaving progressives around the nation while a bended luckily the speaker of the house john boehner in the reactionary tea

partiers in the house came to the rescue rejecting the deal since it didn't go far enough in shredding critical social insurance programs so thank you tea party but where exactly do fiscal cliff negotiations go now especially after the after the nation learned last week that any sort of tax increase at all even on millionaires can't get enough republican support in the house of representatives to pass. the tea party might have helped progressives dodge a bullet when it comes to president obama's social security cuts but it's getting clearer and clearer that they are not interested in governing and could care less about what sort of economic damage the nation may suffer from if we do go over the fiscal cliff or if a few weeks from now they hold the debt limit hostage again given that we've seen president obama and congressional democrats sacrifice their most cherished principles in these fiscal cliff talks is there anything the republicans in the house would be willing to sign off on that doesn't screw the middle class over well

let's ask neil mckay he's the senior reporter at human events online in the editor of the guns and patriots column there welcome back to the show first of all i am not for screwing the middle class and both for that wonderful intro well said we'll see what people think after the next few minutes so i want to play this clip this is what speaker the house john boehner said back in two thousand and eleven after the debt limit deal was struck which created the fiscal cliff and everything that we're not right now so let's let's play the clip there. and when you look at the final agreement that we came to the white house you know i got ninety eight percent of what i wanted i'm pretty happy folks do you think is still pretty happy to do that you regret saying that i mean come on i think that they are speakership is just a list of regrets where the obama presidency has been a list of sore forced crisis c s i was in a room an off the record meeting with the hill staffers when this deal was sort of being given to them and

a very senior guy gainers office said that basically the president is exactly where we want him that was august of two thousand and eleven and here we are now everyone assumed that the debt limit would at least go until seven larry and geitner just before we went on the air sent a letter to congress saying that we're actually going to run out of cash on monday which is probably the real reason why the president came home well i think republicans. at the time boehner saying that thought that president obama was going to win reelection i mean i think that was their whole their whole strategy for the last four years i would think half the people in the studio right now thought the public is going to lose that election and then if romney had won and then the republicans had taken the senate then america would have been reborn and be a whole new set of issues that we would have been rude to reborn as a because here we are live in this world not the next right but let's look at what democrats have put on the table and try to obama i mean as someone who is to the

left of president obama i've been watching the fiscal cliff negotiations and horror i mean he's the first off you raise the limit from two hundred fifty thousand to four hundred thousand you put cuts to social security significant cuts we're talking fifteen hundred dollars less in benefits for people retiring because he's tweaking the. chicken prices go up and here's can eat cat food so let's see he said ok we can get away rid of the payroll tax cut which basically only helps working class americans how why haven't republicans taken any of these deals and what sort of deal would or would republicans at this point i think most most conservative republicans are willing to just go off the cliff right now and just see what happens because if any any solution or any compromise is just going to give the president another excuse to take a victory lap and a lot of conservatives on capitol hill just can't stomach another obama victory lap so politically there's a problem the other problem is that nobody trusts the cuts to be real the democrats

can talk about cuts all they want but every single deal that's ever been cut going back to reagan with tip o'neill has ended up with higher taxes and then ever more higher spending nobody believes if it to cuts already i mean president obama has done significant cuts scaling the guy we're spending look at the baseline of two thousand and eight i mean we had a nine hundred billion dollars stimulus that was supposed to be a one off that's a now that's a permanent part of your baseline. i mean let's go back to the two thousand and nine budget and we haven't and the simplest funds have pretty much run out at this point there's no stimulus yet they knew that we were spending sam if we went back to two thousand and nine spending your deficit would disappear but ok and if we went to seventy percent tax rates where they were under republican presidents like would now be ok then but the wealthy never really cares what the wealthy never do in years until exactly the effective raise significant revenue which we have a revenue problem not a spending problem but let's let's get down i don't want to get out of the going to use of what baseline stuff here is. what we're talking about here what we're

talking about here with the fiscal cliff ultimately is austerity this is this is what we're seeing happen in europe what we're seeing happen in greece and spain and in the u.k. where they didn't pass any stimulus packages like the one you were just talking about and their unemployment rates are significant about their g.d.p. or. higher their g.d.p. growth is significantly lower there in recession after recession republicans just not paying attention even some democrats not paying attention to what's going on across across the pond there i would suggest to you that republicans are paying attention to a lot of things and where they're bracing austerity which is clarity and to not work this in austerity would be good let's zero out the pell grants let's cut back subsidies on amtrak let's pare back some of the some of the so then do these federal workers pay let's cut reserve saturday back to not only rents raise the medicare eligibility age they're not only there but even though the federal civilian employees pay has been quote frozen unquote the step increases are still

in place that there are there are civilian employees who are making more than they did four years ago even though there's a pay freeze let's have a real free we've got a little less than a minute left what should the wealthy sacrifice in these deals. i don't know if sacrifice is the right one we're asking social security recipients which are older people and disabled people to sacrifice future benefits what you're asking for showing people sacrifice what you're saying is what should what should people who have earned their money. sacrifice and exchange for what you have and there is less sort of cares what you're saying is what should i not take from you the rich have earned their money they own their money and so they're giving what they pay what forty percent of the taxes now they're creating all the jobs right there child creator sam job creators we had a great friend clubs will be. focused you know you can sample. for progressives around the nation upset with you with fiscal cliff negotiations are going here's tom's take on what you need to do about it despite not adding

a single penny in the national debt and having a two point six trillion dollars surplus which i'm talking about social security trust fund president obama put social security insurance on the table moving the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations even deeper into republican home turf think about we're debating just how many rich people will get to keep george w. bush's tax cuts we're debating just how many seniors poor people and disabled people are going to suffer and how badly they're going to suffer when their social security insurance is gone we're debating which social welfare programs and unemployment is are going to expire this is the kind of debate you expect between a center right republican a far right republican between dwight eisenhower barry goldwater not between a democrat and a republican. on these grounds republicans when every time and the working class

loses every time. instead president obama should be putting progressive solutions on the table things like a financial transaction tax and you know on every every action on wall street every time they buy or sell something just a little t.v. jacks it will reduce the debt by one point eight trillion dollars over the next decade attacks like this one thousand nine hundred sixty nine hundred sixty four or cutting off taxpayer subsidies to big oil which total forty billion dollars over ten years are ending the massive capital gains loophole which sets income taxes on hedge fund managers and vulture capitalists like mitt romney and people like paris hilton at a maximum fifteen percent less than half of what actual working people pay or common sense cuts to our bloated wasteful defense budget or how to raising the minimum wage that would stimulate the economy and those over the long haul reduce our debt because more people would be paying more taxes or breaking up the big banks to prevent more costly deficit expanding bailouts in the future or how about

creating a single payer health care system would cut into half our deficit it do see in health care costs if all of these things were on the table this would be a robust debate that reflects the political leanings of a center left nation but they are not on the table which shows not just the weakness of president obama but also the weakness of the progressive movement when compared with the hard right movement which is funded by cranky billionaires like the koch brothers karl rove and sheldon adelson labor unions which have historically been the vanguard of the progressive movement have been crippled and independent media including print radio and t.v. which used to carry the voices of average working people across the nation through locally owned radio and t.v. stations have been bankrupted and sold off the large corporate media outlets that spew lies and misinformation to promote the billionaires agenda. essentially the

progressive counterbalances in america which for several generations kept in check the corporatists who wanted to destroy f.d.r.'s new deal and lyndon johnson's great society they were held in line in the democratic by the democratic party they've been removed when ronald reagan busted patco in one thousand nine hundred one he didn't just kick off a three decade assault on labor unions he also kicked off a three decade assault once progressive democratic party this is solid is now reaching its peak as republicans and president obama prepared a car of up the crown jewel of a new deal social security insurance until a new counterbalance is stronger than the creep toward the political right as reflected our current fiscal cliff debate is going to continue relentlessly president obama has given in to republicans over and over again during his first four years in office we need to remind him that he's the president he's armed with a bully pulpit and he's no longer facing reelection he's free to be true to his progressive community organizing roots there's still hope f.d.r.

didn't campaign on bringing revolutionary change to america nine hundred thirty two he was forced to do it by a nation suffering through a great depression and radicalized by the damage done to them by millionaires and banks. the new deal was in part a response to occupations they were called hoovervilles and a genuine outrage across america about the looting of our nation by the very very rich today the occupy movement organized labor and the environmental movement have begun the difficult work to rebuild that progressive base that can counter the billionaires money where parents are not strong enough yet to push congress to the white house to pick up genuine progressive reforms but if enough of us show up over and over again that day may come let's make it sooner rather than later. and after the break what did the mass shooter in newtown have in common with the latest mass

shooter and webster new york and answer coming up after the break.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for langley you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.